1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a system and method for dynamically populating a resolution list and facilitating user input by automatically providing generated completion information in real time with suggested entries of the resolution list.
2. Related Art
Electronic mail (email) has become increasingly popular and is widely recognized as a standard form of communication. Typically, email users require an email client for sending and receiving email. Many of these email clients contain advanced features and options for the convenience of the email users. One such feature or option includes automatic email address resolution. In some systems, automatic email resolution is designed to automatically locate an email address from a user's manually created email address book. Consequently, when a user initiates composition of an email message, the user need only enter initial portions of a recipient's email address or a “friendly name” known to be associated with the recipient.
Friendly names are used to avoid the impersonal technical format of email addresses. The technical format (required by email clients to properly forward email) of an email address is usually denoted by username information followed by a connector and then domain or affiliation information. As an example, the technical format for a user's contact, whose name is Joe William Smith, might be in the form “joes554@hotmail.com” (“joes554” is the username; “@” is the connector; and “hotmail.com” is the domain), while the non-technical format or friendly name for this email address might simply be “Joe Smith”. Clearly, the technical format is esoteric and harder to remember than the friendly name. Also, people sometimes randomly chose usernames, and these usernames are often not related to the actual name or the nickname that he/she is commonly known by. In addition, to complicate matters, many people have similar usernames or share the same or similar domains. As such, email resolution is designed to simplify composition of emails by allowing a user to find a recipient without requiring the user to know the recipient's exact and complete email address.
Nevertheless, these systems are limited because resolution of email addresses depends on the detailed information or “friendly information” (such as the actual names or nicknames of contacts), provided by the user for email addresses as well as the email client and its resolution technique. For instance, many email clients resolve email addresses into friendly names by comparing and verifying the user's “friendly information” entry in the “send to” portion of an email message against recipient information previously entered by the user (for example, in an email address book) and located in the user's email client's database (commonly referred to as “friendly name lookup”) for that particular recipient. However, many email users do not take the time to enter friendly name information into their email address books. Thus, these systems are limited by the users willingness to update and fully complete his/her email address book.
Therefore, what is needed is an email system that not only utilizes email users' entries, but also other known information that is not dependent on the entries to automatically resolve email addresses.